National Republicans
Tempting Women
According to the newspaper one super powerful group is going to pick the winner in the Senate race: Women. Not money. Or virtue. Or sin. But Women. Which, of course, if you’re a woman, may sound like floozy flattery. Or if you’re a woman, and a tad skeptical, you might be wondering,…
Read MoreAn Issue from the East
Gary is taking a break from blogging. Here’s a guest blog from Joe Stewart, Executive Director of the NC FreeEnterprise Foundation; a nonpartisan non-profit organization that conducts research on candidates, campaigns and voter attitudes in North Carolina. Once the match up in the US Senate race was known on primary election night, a reporter asked…
Read MoreOne Honest Man Getting Shot from Both Sides
Years ago a Democratic gnome sitting in a cloister pouring over reams of polls and demographics had a profound revelation: Most of the people who didn’t vote were Democrats. The word spread from gnome to pollster to politicians where it led to scads of mischief (all dressed in the trappings of government) as Democrats passed…
Read MoreOne Kind of Thinking
There’s been a lot of political foolishness going on over in Greensboro and I’ve been watching it pretty closely, working with one of Phil Berger Jr.’s opponents in the Republican Primary, Bruce VonCannon. The other day Berger’s Super PAC broke bad and issued an edict: Voters, they said, ought not to trust Bruce VonCannon to…
Read MoreRethinking Koch
Maybe the attack-Koch strategy is a good idea after all. I had questions, but I’m coming around. Every story needs a villain. That lesson is as old as the Bible. (See: the Serpent, Garden of Eden.) Just as Republicans here want to make William Barber of the NAACP the face of the Democratic…
Read MoreThinking Head
When every politician in Washington sounds like a robot reciting a predictable party line, Rand Paul sounds like a man who actually thinks. Sometimes he sounds sounds nutty and sometimes he makes sense, but he’s worth watching – and listening to. Paul first caught my attention when he filibustered against drones, denounced the NSA…
Read MoreVollermort
The internal politics of the North Carolina Democratic Party are a mystery to me, so I’m lost when people ask, essentially, “WTF is Randy Voller up to?” So I refer you to an insightful piece by an observer I trust: Bob Geary with Indy Week. Geary begins: “After a stormy year as state Democratic…
Read MoreKeep ‘em here, Send ‘em home
Immigration, the newspaper says, is ‘bedeviling” Congresswoman Renee Ellmers. It’s also bedeviling Speaker John Boehner. And half the Republicans in Washington. It’s a knotty problem. Part of the politicians have decided it’s best to send every single illegal immigrant back to where they came from – but no one’s quite sure how to…
Read MorePandora’s Box
It’s got to be a temptation – but it may not have a happy ending. Lately, President Obama’s taken to running the country by Executive Order – for instance, the other day he found a part of Obamacare wasn’t going to work so he simply announced he wouldn’t enforce that part of the law. …
Read MoreTalking Impeachment
Is this a “Groundhog Day” sequel? Republicans talking about impeachment? Is it 1998 again? Dan Barkin had an intriguing article in the N&O about several Republican U.S. Senate candidates talking up impeaching President Obama. They fumed about Obama’s alleged high crimes and misdemeanors, not to mention being black, a Democrat and President anyway. Democrats…
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